CD and Download

DVD and Download

pancake, plastic or NAB metal spool

Second generation copy of the original master tape

More About Us

Tone-Pearls Records is a non-profit atelier of music researchers and music lovers devoted to recreating the original experience of live concerts. We also offer some recordings on master tape and also in digital formats at cost price.

Tone-Pearls, as a practical application, derived from our scientific research of music, tone and hearing. We have developed the Tone-Pearls Recording Technique based on Tone-Pearls using analogue recording with a pair of microphones.

What Our Reviewers Say

Michael Fremer, Stereophile

...but the copy [TPRCD1] I have is as fine a piano recording as I've heard on CD

Reviewers

The records of Tone-Pearls Records have been reviewed in some fine magazines:

Recording Process

1

Pre-recording Process

The right idea of music, performance and musicians -- The right place that suits to the music to be recorded -- The ideal arrangement of musical instruments (and musicians), microphones and recording staff --The placement of Tone-Pearls on different locations of the venue according to the principles of music and space.

2

Recording to Tape

Music is captured by just a single pair of AKG C 414 Limited Edition microphones, directly connected to a Nagra IVS reel-to-reel tape recorder with Vovox cables. Music is recorded on RMG SM468 tapes at 15 ips speed.

3

Finalizing Master Tape

Because the music is recorded direct to stereo, there is no need for mixing or manipulating it after the recording has been made. We do not want to manipulate the recordings in any way. We always use live recording and record entire pieces of music. We never create a track from separate recordings.

4

Master Tape Dubbing

At first we made a first generation copy of the original master tapes using two identical Nagra IVS. The first generation copy was used as a source for later dubbing. The same Nagra IVS, on which the first generation copy was recorded, served as source machine. The target Studer A807 tape recorder was directly connected to the source machine.

5

Digital Formats

AAD is an exact first generation digital copy of the master tape. In order to reduce the number of conversions and avoid any additional manipulation, we used two different digital conversions: One for CD audio and one for HD audio. CD audio and hi-res audio files were also converted to Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), a file format for lossless audio data compression, in order to speed up the download.